


His James

by greenapricot



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, James in Glasses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 18:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12371283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/pseuds/greenapricot
Summary: This is a James that Robbie gets to see only on weekends when they haven’t got a case, and the rare weekday evenings they are not falling exhausted into bed after a too-long day. A James that only Robbie gets to see, period.





	His James

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is born of pure self-indulgence and procrastinating writing an accidentally epic casefic I've been working on. Inspired by [these](http://greenapricot.tumblr.com/post/165555285965/laurence-fox-in-the-real-thing-at-the-cambridge) [two](http://greenapricot.tumblr.com/post/165804493088/laurence-fox-plays-the-guitar-in-his-dressing) photos of Laurence Fox.

Robbie stops in the bedroom doorway. James is already in bed sitting up against the headboard, a large hardcover book propped up on his knees, head bowed as he reads. His hair and skin are painted golden in the light of the bedside lamp. It is a lovely picture. 

James has got his glasses on—contacts removed for the night—and the combination of the neat, black frames, the curve of his neck, and his tousled hair makes Robbie want to touch. Makes him want to cup James’ face in his hands. To kiss his brow. To kiss his mouth and interrupt the idle nail-biting that tells of his complete absorption in what he’s reading. To run his fingers through James’ hair and see if it’s possible to muss the too-short hair at his nape as much as the longer hair at his crown. 

All thoughts Robbie has had before. All things he has done before. But, there is something in the contemplation of them, the anticipation, the knowledge that he can have all of these things. That James will be amenable.

James doesn’t look up when Robbie shuffles his feet and leans against the door jamb. Robbie can tell by the state of James’ hair, and the way he runs his fingers through it as he reads, that the subject of the book is something heady. Something to get that big brain of his working. He will tell Robbie about it later. It will be something dry, and obscure, but remarkably interesting when the description comes from James’ lips, in James’ voice.

It is a Sunday and James hasn’t shaved since Friday morning. Three days in, the blond stubble is starting to itch. He scratches at it idly, hand going from hair, to mouth, to chin; the mechanical manifestation of James acquiring knowledge. He is hardly ever still even when he is still, is his James. 

Tomorrow morning before work James will shave off the remnants of his beard. Once again transforming himself from James—who is appealingly unkempt and lounges about the flat in ripped jeans plucking at his guitar of an evening—to the clean lines of Sergeant Hathaway. Never presenting anything but the most put-together facade to the streets of Oxford. 

Robbie likes to complain about the stubble, but he secretly likes it—a secret he has no doubt James is well aware of. He likes how different kissing an unshaven James is to how kissing Val had been. A reminder of how unlikely and how amazing it is to have found such love twice in his life, and with two such very different people.

Before James was a regular fixture in his bed Robbie had thought him the sort to have a meticulous routine. But no, besides removing his contacts and putting on his glasses before bed, James seems to operate on unknowable whim. Some nights he folds his jeans and hoodie and puts them away, some nights he drops his suit to the floor in a heap. Some nights he puts on one of his many faded band t-shirts and pyjama bottoms before crawling into bed, some nights he doesn’t put on anything at all. Tonight his chest is bare above the duvet.

This is a James that Robbie gets to see only on weekends when they haven’t got a case, and the rare weekday evenings they are not falling exhausted into bed after a too-long day. A James that only Robbie gets to see, period. James never wears his glasses outside the flat, but in this moment Robbie very much wants him to. Wants to see him wearing them in the bright light of day, squinting into the sun on the way to a crime scene. But, this is his James. All for him. Only for him. And he is reluctant to share. 

Robbie is suddenly so overwhelmed with love he wonders if James can sense it on the other side of the room. How did he get so lucky as to share his life with this beautiful, kind, complicated man?

“They’re just glasses,” James says, perceptive as always. “They serve a mundane, practical purpose.”

“I know.” Robbie steps into the room, a bit embarrassed to have been caught staring, to have been caught thinking such grandiose, romantic thoughts. “I like the look of them on you.”

“You like the look of me regardless,” James says. His smile is playful, cheeky. Whatever he’d been contemplating so seriously in the book quickly forgotten. He closes the book and puts it down as Robbie gets into bed. Robbie leans over, hand on James’ wrist, to forestall the familiar practised motion of James removing his glasses; pull them off by the left arm, fold them, place them neatly on the corner of the bedside cabinet, turn off the light.

“Leave them on for a bit,” Robbie says.

“Yeah?” James says, his eyes twinkling through the lenses.

“Yeah,” Robbie says, and leans in further pressing their lips together.

____


End file.
